I’m very excited to inform all our users that BeInSync 2.5 is now available from our site. We will be gradually updating our user base, but feel free to download and upgrade if you’d like to try it before this happens.

What’s new? Well, lots of things. Here are some examples:

Assign roles and permissions when sharing files with others. By default now, the creator of a ‘Group Share’ is the administrator and the participants are ‘viewers’ with read-only access. That’s what you probably want if you’re sharing pictures, videos or anything else you do not want the other parties to change. You may also give the other parties ‘participant’ or ‘admin’ roles if you’d like them to be able to modify or delete files.

New Toolbar for IE gives you instant access to your remote computers and shared folders.

“Unread” file indication, so you can know which file has been added or modified in one of your shared folders.

New streamlined registration and installation process.

The ability to place shared folders on a network drive, external drive or even a thumb drive.

After putting a tremendous anount of work into it, version 2.0 is now available on our Web site (http://www.beinsync.com). So what’s in it? A very significant performance boost (over 3 times faster), Instant sharing of folders over the Web with non-BeInSync users, support for all major browsers (Firefox, Safari, Opera), an entirely new look-and-feel and more… you are invited to visit and try for yourself.

I’m noticing our company name, BeInSync, poses problems sometimes. Pronouncing it over the phone is one source of confusion, the other is writing it in several ways. So, just to clarify, it is BeInSync, not BeInSynch or Be(L)nSync (yes, the ‘I’ is sometimes confused with the letter ‘L’).

Anyone having difficulty with the name? Like it? Hate it? You’re invited to post your comments and let me know…

According to a survey by InsightExpress, commisioned by VPN vendor SonicWall, 67% of employees surveyed believe working from home increases their productivity, and over half log in to their remote network on a daily basis.

However, the survey also found out some additional statistics…

It seems some 10% of those working from home do not wear any clothes while doing so! And additionally, only 30% of the men (and 45% of the women) take a bath on their work-from-home days!

Until recently, P2P was infamous mainly for its use for piracy and as a conduit for spreading malware. But with the exponential growth in digital media consumption (how much storage are you using just for digital photos, music and video?), the client-server model breaks down. You simply cannot, not even if you’re Google, store all the music and videos produced everywhere around the world on your servers, and still not charge anything for it.

So, it seems the power is shifting to the people. The end points, or peers, become important, while large server are becoming a thing of the past. Perhaps that’s what P2P really stands for, Power-2-People. Using new P2P techniques, people will be able access the Internet from anywhere, securely access and share files of any size across network boundaries, distribute any size data to any number of people, and I’m sure there’s much more to come.

Functionally speaking, BeInSync can be viewed as an alternative to remote access software such as GoToMyPC or a VPN. However, the underlying concept is different: with BeInSync you don’t need to access your data. Instead, your data can follow you! In other words, beyond plain remote Web access, since BeInSync can automatically keep your files and folders in sync across multiple computers, you can use it and not have to worry about accessing your data anymore. There’s also a performance benefit here. Since you essentially work on files locally, you don’t have the roundtrip time involved when using VPNs and other remote access applications. Imagine editing a huge PhotoShop file with a VPN…

I believe a VPN-type software is a huge overkill for an individual or a small business: it’s expensive, difficult to set up and doesn’t do what you really want, which is simply to make sure you have your data with you anytime, anywhere, without having to work hard at getting it.

You’ve probably heard about the recent concerns voiced around Google’s new Google Desktop product. It seems, according to the EFF and others, that if you choose to use this software for file sharing, remote access or for searching across multiple computers, your private files end up on Google’s servers. Worse yet, recently we’ve all heard about the justice department requests from Google, Yahoo!, AOL and MSN to disclose certain user information. The combination of these things is something to be concerned about.

When designing BeInSync we used secure Peer-to-Peer technology in order to access and share files across PCs. We took extra care not to have to store user files on our servers. Moreover, we took care not even to store user file name and indices. I want to stress this point, as some of our users are still coming to us expressing concerns about privacy and asking where their files are stored. The answer is: nowhere, only on your own computers! When you access a remote file through a Web browser or sync it to your computer, the connection is made directly to the peer PC and does not go through our servers. So you can be assured BeInSync, and of course any other entity, cannot access your private files.

Let me introduce myself. My name is Tal and I’m the founder and CEO of BeInSync, an Internet startup aiming to redefine the way people access and share their data.

It’s funny, really; People are using multiple computers and devices, more and more digital media is produced (especially digital photos, videos), these massive amounts of files and data scattered across these computers and devices, and no one has yet offered a good, easy and affordable way to handle the chaos that ensues! In late 2002, me and my colleague set to try and tackle this problem from a new angle.

In this blog I will try to share my “musings” and I hope to make it interactive and to receive valuable feedback from BeInSync’s users.